Chapter VI.

Since it has been shown in a former chapter that the directive rule, to which the inducements of natural religion attach themselves, will infallibly be detrimental to human happiness, it follows of course that these inducements, if they produce any effect at all, must be efficient to a mischievous purpose. I now propose to investigate the extent of influence which they exercise over mankind, as well as the manner of their operation.

All inducements are expectations either of pleasure or pain. The force with which all expectations act upon the human bosom varies according as they differ in, 1. Intensity,—2. Duration,—3. Certainty,—4. Propinquity. These are page 47 the four elements of value which constitute and measure the comparative strength of all human motives.

Take for example an expected pleasure. What are the motives which govern a man in the investment of money? He prefers that mode in which the profits are largest, most certain, and quickest. Present to him a speculation of greater hazard or in which he must be kept longer out of his money; the value of such an expectation is less, and he will not embrace it unless allured by a larger profit. Deficiency in certainty and propinquity will thus be compensated by an increase of intensity and duration.

To appreciate, therefore, the sway which posthumous expectations exercise over the behaviour of mankind, we must examine to what degree they comprise these elements of value.

First, they are to the highest degree deficient in propinquity. Every one conceives them as extremely remote; and in the greatest number of instances, such remoteness is conformable to experience, as insurance calculations testify.

Secondly, they are also defective in certainty. Posthumous pleasures and pains are reserved to be awarded in the lump, after a series of years. The only possible mode of distributing them, at such a period must be by reviewing the whole life of the individual—by computing his meritorious and culpable acts and striking a balance between them. It is impossible to conceive an expectation more deplorably uncertain, than that which such a scale of award must generate. In order to strip it of this character of doubt, the individual should have kept an exact journal of his debtor and creditor account with regard to post-obituary dispensations. Whoever does or ever did this? Yet if it is not done, so universal is self-deceit, that every man will unquestionably over-estimate his own extent of observance. His impression will thus be, that he has a balance in hand, and that the performance of any particular forbidden act will but slightly lessen the ample remainder which awaits him. But suppose it otherwise—let him imagine that the balance is against him. There still remains the chance of future amendment and compensation, by which it may be rendered favourable, and this prospect is page 48 incalculably more liable to exaggeration than the estimate which he forms of his past conduct.

The prodigious excess to which mankind heap up splendid purposes for the coming year, is matter of notoriety and even of ridicule. A slight accession of punishment incurred by what the individual may be about to do at the moment, will be lost in the contemplation of the mass of subsequent reward. Posthumous expectations must, therefore, under every supposition, be pre-eminently defective in the element of certainty.

To make up for this want of certainty and propinquity, the pleasures and pains anticipated in a future life are (it will be urged) intense and durable to the utmost extent. Imagination, no doubt (our sole guide under unassisted natural religion), may magnify and protract them beyond all limit, since there is no direct testimony which can check her career. But it should be remarked that this excessive intensity and permanence can never be otherwise than purely imaginary, nor can the most appalling descriptions of fancy ever impart to them that steady and equable impressiveness which characterizes a real scene subjected to the senses. As all our ideas of pleasure and pain are borrowed from experience, the most vivid anticipations we can frame cannot possibly surpass the liveliest sensation. Magnify the intensity as you will, this must be its ultimate boundary. But you never can stretch it even so high as this point: For to do this would be to exalt the conceptions of fancy to a level with real and actual experience, so that the former shall affect the mind as vividly as the latter—which is the sole characteristic of insanity, and the single warrant for depriving the unhappy madman of his liberty.

If, indeed, the expectations actually created in the mind corresponded in appalling effect to the descriptions of the fancy—and if the defects of certainty and propinquity could be so far counteracted as to leave these expectations in full possession of the mind—the result must be, absolute privation of reason, and an entire sacrifice of all sublunary enjoyment. The path of life must lie as it were on the brink of a terrific precipice, where it would be impossible to preserve a sound and distinct vision, and where the imminent and inextricable peril of our situation would altogether page 49 absorb the mind, so as to leave us no opportunity for building up any associations of comfort or delight. A man who is to have an operation performed in a short space of time, cannot dismiss it from his thoughts for an instant; how much less, if he sees, or believes that he sees, a gigantic hand, armed with instruments of exquisite torture, and menacing his defenceless frame?

Such must be the result, if these anticipations did really affect the mind in a degree proportional to their imagined intensity. They cannot be conceived as tolerably near and certain, without driving the believer mad, and without rendering it a far more desirable lot for him to have had no life at all, than the two lives taken together. Looking therefore to the happiness of the present life alone, it appears to be merely saved from complete annihilation, by that diminished influence of the posthumous prospects which distance and uncertainty cannot fail to occasion. It is their inefficiency, and not their efficiency, which constitutes the safeguard of human comfort.

But what is the real value of this residuary influence? To determine this question, we must consult the analogy of human conduct and observe the effect of large expectations, when remote and uncertain, as compared with others of small amount, but close at hand and specific.

How painful are the apprehensions which the approach of death creates! To preserve the mind from being altogether overpowered by them, and to maintain a cool deportment at such an instant, is supposed to be an effort of more than human firmness. Thus terrible and overwhelming is the prospect when merely approximated to the eye. Strip it of its propinquity, and all its effect upon the mind imme-diately vanishes. Its real terrors, its ultimate certainty, remain unimpaired; but delay the moment, for a few years at farthest, and the whole scene is immediately dismissed from the thoughts. So confident and neglectful do we become upon the subject, that it requires more than ordinary fore-thought to make those provisions which a due regard to the happiness of our survivors would enjoin.

This is an illustration of peculiar value, because it is a case in which mere remoteness practically annuls the most dreadful of all expectations, without insinuating even the page 50 most transient suspicion of ultimate escape. But if distance alone will produce so striking a deduction, how much will its negative effect be heightened, when coupled with uncertainty as to the eventful fulfilment? It seems apparent that these two negative circumstances, taken together, must altogether prevent the most painful anticipations from ever affecting the mind, unless under very peculiar circumstances, which we shall presently notice.²

Analogy therefore seems to testify most indisputably, that sufferings so remote and so uncertain as those of a posthumous life, whatever may be their fancied intensity, can scarcely affect the mind at all, in its natural state. Such anticipations can only obtain possession of it when introduced by other analogous ideas, which have previously perverted the usual current of thought, and rendered it fit for their reception. Under such circumstances, these new allies cannot fail to aggravate most powerfully that tone of sentiment to which they owe their origin. Their distance and uncertainty will be forgotten, and they will be conceived as imminent and inevitable; while the impression of their intensity will be more vehement than ever. Such will be the case in the peculiar state of mind to which we here allude; but taking mankind as they usually think and page 51 judge, it is altogether contrary to experience that posthumous expectations should ever be otherwise than nugatory.

Now if, according to the general tenor of thought, they become thus dormant and inoperative, they cannot possibly be employed as restraints upon crime. For when crime is committed, the mind is under the sway of a present and actuating temptation. It is not only exempt from all such associations as might contribute to kindle up the thoughts of posthumous terrors; but it is under the strong grasp and impulse of a contrary passion, which fills it with ideas of a totally opposite character. So completely indeed does the temptation absorb the whole soul, that it is difficult in many cases to counteract it by the most immediate and unequivocal prospect of impending evil. But unless the punishment denounced obtrudes itself upon the delinquent with a force sufficiently pressing and inflexible to overbear the sophistry of temptation, we may be assured that he will be insensible to the threats and will commit the crime. How much more then, where the apprehended evil is so remote and uncertain, and the value of the expectation so fluctuating and occasional, as to require a peculiarly favourable tone of thought before the mind can be induced to harbour it? We are surely authorized in deeming an expectation so constituted altogether useless as a motive to resist any strong desire.

But what is that preliminary state of mind into which posthumous apprehensions find so easy an admittance? It is that in which congenial feelings have been predominant—a state of timidity and depression, when gloomy associations overspead the whole man, and cast horror and wretchedness round his future prospects. In this condition, the fountains of all painful thought are opened, and posthumous terrors present an inexhaustible fund of kindred matter. Their distance and their uncertainty are of no consequence, for the mensuration of the mental eye is at such a period confounded, and it distinguishes not the scene before it. Their indeterminate character renders them only the more appropriate, for the imagination demands but a plausible pretence and outline, to conjure up the amplest detail of terrific particulars. In sickness and in nervous despondency, associations of this kind make their most disastrous page 52 inroads, and contribute most actively to plunge the mind into that state of unassuageable terror, which borders so closely on insanity, and frequently terminates in it. And in the hour of death, when these apprehensions seem on the brink of reality, they obtrude themselves in thick and appalling clouds, and aggravate that prostration both of bodily and mental faculties, which marks the close of existence.

Such is the force, and such the mode of operation, belonging to these superhuman expectations, when acting singly. And it appears from hence most undeniably, that they are almost wholly inefficient on every occasion when it might have been possible for them to enlarge the sum of temporal happiness—and efficient only in cases where they swell the amount of temporal misery.

For the only benefit which they are calculated to accomplish would be the repression of crimes. To this purpose it has been shown that they are wholly inadequate; for during the influence of temptation, the only season in which a man commits crime, they find no place in the mind, and therefore can interpose no barrier. On the other hand, they act with the highest effect at a period when they cannot by possibility produce any temporal benefit—that is, at the close of life: and the extent of their influence is always in an inverse ratio to the demand for it. The greater the previous despondency, the wider the space which they occupy, and the more powerfully do they contribute to heighten those morbid associations which the overmastered reason is unable to dispel.